2ND EDIT: This tutorial may no longer work. As I found the forced updates unacceptable, I went back to Windows 7 meaning I cannot offer any support if this goes wrong. As I said before, do not “upgrade” to Windows 10 unless absolutely necessary.

1st EDIT: After using Windows 10 for six months, I have finally gotten so fed up with the way it nags you to update that I have decided to downgrade back to Windows 7. If you have Windows 7 I strongly recommend you save yourself a lot of hassle by not upgrading. If you’d like to remove the nag asking you to upgrade to Windows 10, someone made a tool for that which you can download here.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

One of the biggest complaints about Windows 10 is that it automatically updates your computer without user consent, meaning it sometimes downloads updates you don’t want, such as faulty drivers. Another problem is that it also scheduled restarts when it thinks you aren’t using the computer, which may not be convenient for you.

This guide will show you how to decide when Windows 10 updates and which updates it installs. This solution isn’t as good as the way Windows 7 does things; checking for updates manually will still automatically download all available updates without allowing you to pick and choose, and it will still schedule a restart whenever updates are installed. It also requires that you install the updates before you block them, meaning you have to uninstall them, and not all updates can be uninstalled. Unfortunately the solution in this guide is the best one that I am aware of at this point of time, but hopefully at some point in the future either Microsoft will see the light and bring things back to the way they were or someone will figure out how to fix this themselves.

(Optional) Disconnect from the internet, if the internet is connected. Because you probably don’t want windows to update before you’ve finished this, I recommend that you do not connect to the internet at all before this guide is complete. If you have downloaded any updates, you should be able to check and uninstall them later, but some updates may not be uninstallable.

Open the Start Menu and type “gpedit.msc” without the quotation marks and press Enter to open the Group Policy Editor.

You will eventually get a notification saying “You need some updates”. To see it, click the notification icon to open the Action Centre, and then click the notification.

You now have a list of updates to download. Have a look at them, and if you’re happy to download them all, click “Download”. If there are any you do not want to download that do not say they cannot be uninstalled, proceed to the next step. If there are any updates you don’t want to install that cannot be uninstalled, you’ll have to make the decision whether to install it or not install updates again until someone comes up with a better solution.

Run the program you download in step 8 (named “wushowhide”)and click “Next” in the window that comes up.

Click “Hide updates”

Choose any updates you do not want to install and tick them on the list. Once you have chosen all the updates you do not want, click “Next”.

Once the updates have finished installing, restart the computer if it asks you to.

Open Settings, Choose “Update & Security”. Click “Advanced options”, “View your update history”, and then “Uninstall updates”. From here you can remove any update you don’t want, and if you chose it hide it this the troubleshooter, it won’t show up again. You should wait until you’ve removed all the updates you want before restarting.